


our father, who art in heaven

by ammunitionist



Category: 1917 (Movie 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blake Lives, Infant Death, M/M, Religious Conflict, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:42:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22534930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ammunitionist/pseuds/ammunitionist
Summary: when they get to ecoust, laurie is dead.the baby is not.(companion piece to badmeetsevil's 'hallowed be thy name').
Relationships: Lance Corporal Schofield/ Lance Corporal Blake, Will Schofield/ Tom Blake
Comments: 11
Kudos: 115





	our father, who art in heaven

**Author's Note:**

  * For [badmeetsevil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/badmeetsevil/gifts).



> hello! this is my half of a collab i did with @badmeetsevil ! basically, his is blake-centric and mine is scho-centric. i think the rest of the fic is self explanatory, but if u have questions, drop em below!

They stop not long at all after the German sprints at them.

It's a panicked, hasty run, silent in its terror, and Schofield tries not to think about the hot blood running into the back of his uniform. It makes him feel woozy.

He sees the wood paneling before Blake. It's slightly askew, a black triangle in the far corner beckoning him. Behind them, the German takes a heavy fall, and Scho's head whips back around to register it. He looks back at the paneling.

An opening. It has to be. It looks like one of the basement levels he used to see in London tenant buildings, probably just housing storage rooms. Definitely empty, since the bombing of the town.

Sanctuary. The German is still facedown.

Will kicks the wood out of the way with one strong motion. They have no time to hesitate, no time to choose to hide or to keep running. He has to get them both to safety.

"In here!" he hisses sharply at Blake, already sliding into the hole feet-first. "Come on!"

He tugs Blake down by the ankle, practically dragging his partner into the sub level. Sure enough, it's a corridor, light beaming from one of the open doors to their right.

Light.

Fuck.

Blake starts towards it because  _ of course he would _ , juvenile as he is. Scho holds out an arm abruptly, hitting Tom in the diaphragm, holding him back.

_ "Wait _ ," he hisses, gesturing at the ground with his hand holding the rifle. "Could be the Boche. Look at the ground."

Sure enough, the concrete below them is darkened with some dried substance. It can't be gas, water wouldn't stain like that, and Schofield assumes that no one is spilling their drink here.

_ Blood. It has to be blood. _

Scho lifts his rifle to the ready, stepping out in front of Blake again. It's an instinct past instinct at this point. Protect. Especially Blake, his face tensed but still so young in the shifting firelight.

Schofield pushes the rags hanging in the doorframe off to one side with his rifle, leading with it into the room. Careful to check any corners, he sweeps the barrel around slowly, blue eyes wide and as focused as he can force them to be. It's like being drunk, a slight buzz enveloping his hazy vision that he has to push through to surpass. Schofield knows he's concussed without even having to check.

There's no one in the room, he thinks, not at first. No bits of movement catch the corners of his vision. He can't see the glint of any knives or bayonettes. It's safe.

There's a girl lying facedown by the fire.

He sees her abruptly, having just rounded the chair. She was hidden by the shadows, her body unmoving and small compared to the unknown things stacked by the walls, their shadows flickering with the light source. Schofield's heart drops into his stomach when he sees the oily black wound in her right shoulder.

Knees bent, moving like a soldier, Scho bends down to check her pulse. It's nonexistent, and he checks her wrist too- more wishful thinking than second guessing. Dead.

Schofield straightens, bringing his rifle to hip level. He takes a deep breath in, willing down thoughts of his sister.

"She's dead. Been so a few days, I think."

As he speaks, Schofield turns around, seeing Blake standing by the dresser. His gun is down, and Scho raises an eyebrow.

"What have you got over there?" he asks mildly.

"It's a baby, Will."

Perhaps more startled by (and definitely registering first) Blake's use of his first name, Schofield starts over to the dresser, his slowed brain taking a moment to register the soft cries of a child.

_ A baby. _

Will comes up on Blake's right, looking past his shoulder, down at the baby. Its face is tiny, round, surrounded by a faded wool blanket. It reminds him so much of his nieces that he's staggered, images of his life before the war blinding him all over again.

The baby is crying. Will acts on practiced impulse.

"I think she likes you," Tom says, but Will barely hears him.

"Give her here," he says quietly, lifting the babe from Tom's arms and into his own. The small, warm weight is so familiar he has to suck back tears. Schofield remembers holding his sister's daughters just days after they were born, tiny and white in their christening clothes. They had liked him, his sister calling him in at times to get them to stop squalling.

This baby seems to like him too. He smiles, face warming in the firelight.

"Hey, shh, it's alright," Will speaks softly, watching her little face start to return to normal. He rocks her against his chest, rifle leaning against the dresser. "You must be pretty spooked, right? You're all safe now, sweetheart."

Will looks up at Tom, slightly embarrassed that the other man watched him speak so softly to the babe. His cheeks color ever so slightly, but the firelight hides it.

"Get my canteen out. I have milk."

Will rocks the child as Blake obeys, smiling down at her. He nods at his partner when the canteen is proffered, moving to the table by the armchair to set it down and uncork it with one hand. He dips his pinky finger into the metal bottle, milk coating it to his knuckle as Tom tilts it to help.

"Here you go, little lady," He says, sotto, offering the little girl the milk from his pinky. Her lips part and she sucks greedily, cries silenced by the preoccupation of food.

Will smiles.

It's like the war has just faded away.

He dips his pinky into the milk a second time, giving it back to the baby. Her tiny hand grabs at his, pulling him closer. Will's lips part in a soft laugh, just as he looks up to see Tom gazing at him.

"What're you looking at me like that for?" he asks, the self-consciousness creeping back up on him.

"Can't help it," Tom says back, and Will immediately ignores the way his heart flutters in his chest. A silence persists.

The baby gurgles suddenly and Will returns his attention to her, hoisting her little body a bit higher against his.

"She really likes you," Tom says. Will smiles.

"Come here. Look at her." Will gestures to Tom with one arm, the other holding the baby secure. He moves so the babe is between the two of them, almost like they're protecting her from the world. Like she's theirs.

He tries not to think about that part.

"Here, put your hand- yep, perfect." Will guides Tom's hand to the baby's neck and lower head, letting him support a portion of her weight. It's soft, unbearably so, until Will notices the heat coming from the child.

No.

_ Oh, no. _

Will withdraws the baby suddenly, cradling her to his body. He presses his lips to her tiny forehead, remembering how his mother used to check for fever when he was small.

She's burning up.

William feels his throat constrict, panic welling up in his body. They don't have anything to treat the child, and if she'd been unattended for at least  _ four days _ -

"Tom, I-"

He can't go on. The thought is too much.

"Tom, I think she's got a fever. A-"

_ God, please. _

"-A bad one."

"What are you implying?" Tom asks, and Will steels himself to answer.

The baby is coughing again, her cries starting up now that Will isn’t offering her milk.

He has a sinking feeling that it wouldn't matter at all if he did.

She's sick, much sicker than Will first thought. Her little eyes, blue like Will's nieces, are glazed. She's barely moving. She's fucking  _ blistering. _

The realization reminds Will where they are. What they're doing. Who is depending on them.

_ They can't save her. _

"Tom," he starts, but he chokes up. Not unlike the field before the farmhouse, where Will had been talking about his family. It's a similar pain.

"Tom," is all he gets out, a second time, before it really hits him and he has to fight down tears, harder this time.

"We can't-"  _ Please, please, don't make me say it, please, it can't be this, God, please. _

Will tries to say it with his eyes. Tom normally reads them so well.

_ We can't bring her with us. _

Breath shuddering through his teeth, Will carries the baby back to her place in the dresser, his arms shaking. Once laid down, the baby starts squalling louder, now that she's been separated from him. He leans heavily on the dresser, the sheer fucking weight of the moment pressing in on his concussed brain.

Everything is crashing back down.

"We can't…" he starts again, steadying himself. "We can't bring her. Even if we could, the fever…"

"We can't… leave her here…" Tom forces out, barely a whisper. Will can't look at him.

"Can you…" Scho swallows, pausing. "Can you think of anything better to do?"

Blake looks up at him, indignant, and Schofield barely registers his words. Something about an aid post.

"We don't have time, Tom," Will struggles to say, the wave of grief threatening to close his throat completely.

"I- even if we did, they wouldn't-"

He can’t finish, but Tom understands.

_ They wouldn't be able to save her. _

It's cruel to just leave the baby.

She'd die a slow, painful, lonely death, pyretic and starving. She'd stay in that drawer until death came for her.

It's too cruel, but the only alternative they have sends sheer fucking  _ terror  _ through Schofield's body. Every muscle is tensed, repulsed by what his mind offered forward. He  _ can't. _

And he can't just leave her here.

"If we don't-" he starts, the words trembling with guilt and anguish.

"If we don't, she- she'll die anyways. She'll be-"

Will feels a surge of bile come up his throat. He's killed men before, seen them die a million tiny deaths, but a baby girl? The very idea was sacrilege.

"She'll be  _ alone." _

All it takes is for Tom to nod. The agreement opens the floodgates within him.

With shaking hands, Will plucks the babe out of her makeshift cradle.

William looks down at her little red face, all scrunched up in pain, and he starts to cry.

He remembers back home, when one of his little nieces had caught pneumonia. The whole house had been somber, his sister inconsolable. No one expected her to live past the weekend.

Will had slipped into the nursery and held her for hours, singing her little songs, rocking her gently. He didn't give up on her, not when she didn't have the strength to look at him, not when she was coughing so hard her little body trembled.

She survived that. Sara is eight now.

This is different. They aren't in a nursery, they aren't in London, Will doesn't have hours to coo at her and will her back to vitality. They have a mission. They have a ticking clock. They have no medicine.

Will's lips part, unthinking.

_ "They went to sea in a sieve, they did, _ " he says softly, a lanky hand tracing the baby girl's cheek.

This had been Sara's favorite, all those years ago.

" _ In a sieve, they went to sea _ ."

She's quieting again, moving less. Will wants to imagine she's merely falling off to sleep.

" _ In spite of all their friends could say, _ "

Slowly, fingers shaking, Will pulls the blanket over her tiny nose. He presses down on it with the weight of a dead man, forcing himself to think of the suffering she'd endure in the alternative.

She doesn't thrash at all.

" _ On a winter's morn, on a stormy day. _ "

She stops moving.

Her body weighs more than anything Will has ever held.

Moving carefully, every step more agonizing than the last, Will returns her to her little drawer. She looks so peaceful, now, like death wasn't what had taken her. Merely rest, sleep, she'd come out the other side and be okay.

Will wants to kneel and pray, but he can't. It'd feel like a bastardization of his faith. Kill an infant and then beg for her soul? He deserved Hell for other things, but that would just send him deeper.

He sends up something silent, the tears that blurred his vision dripping from his eyes and sliding down his nose.  _ Just let her rest. _

Will presses a final kiss to her tiny little forehead and turns around, legs wobbling like they're made from gelatin. God, he can't take this. Nothing like this was ever supposed to happen.

William takes in a choked, stuttering, congested breath, feeling it stop in his throat more than once. It feels like a betrayal that he's still breathing, still alive after doing that.

He does not allow his face to break and display the anguish. He does not allow it all to come to the surface. Tom can't see him like this.

The tears still come, though, and Will stumbles backward with a sudden wave of nausea.

"I can't-" he gasps out, shoulders wracked in pain.

"I didn't-"

Blake is there to steady him. One of his hands (smaller than Will's, but thicker) wraps around his trembling body to rest on his upper back. It grounds Scho, sending shivers through his torso and driving his arms to lock around Tom's body.

It doesn't take long for his legs to give out.

Schofield's knees, weakened by the unforgivable sin he'd just committed, break. They no longer support the unholy body of the man they are a part of.

Will has never felt so dirty.

He  _ sobs,  _ loud, wrenching cries muffled only by the shoulder of Tom's uniform. He sounds like a wounded animal, like the very act of putting the baby to rest was driving bayonettes to pierce his skin and claw deeper. Vaguely, Will can feel Blake's arms moving around him, but they don't matter. Nothing can save him from this. He doesn't  _ deserve  _ to be saved from this.

It feels like the moment will never end. Schofield mourns the little girl, cries for her, weeps for the sheer despondency of her situation.

She would never be a young woman.

Never learn to read, never learn to mend, never learn songs from her mother.

Never know love.

It _ breaks _ him.

Schofield can feel Blake trying to hold him up, trembling from what must’ve been a combination of exertion and grief. He tries to bring his weight back squarely over his feet, hold himself up, face the world and what he’s done. He is a soldier. This is what any man would have done.

The thought does not stop the way sobs wrench themselves from his throat.

His legs, ever-unfaithful, negligent against the weight of his guilt, let him fall shortly after. His knees hit the concrete and a dull pain fades outward from the contact, his nerves agitated but ultimately ignored. Schofield hits his knees like he's begging for salvation, like there's an angel in front of him, full glory, full fury. He imagines the white light against his eyelids, coming closer, sending him to rot for what he'd done. It's all he can do to cling to Tom's legs.

Death is different when it's you or them. Death is different when it's men, even if the men are barely between that and boyhood. Death is different when it's bombs or artillery or gas or bullet. This is different.

This was never supposed to happen.

Through the fog of anguish, Will feels Blake grip his upper arm, whispering something about having to leave. Tom pulls Schofield back to his feet, slowly, helping the older regain his footing. Will sniffs pathetically, blue eyes tinted crimson about the edges.

Blake hugs him. Schofield knows better than to deny it.

Outside, he hears footsteps, boots pounding in the decimated dirt. _ Germans.  _ Schofield feels a renewed anger boil within him. If the bloody Hun hadn't started this war, the little girl would still be alive. If they hadn't invaded France, her story would be much different.

That anger could do nothing for her now.

Will inhales deeply and lets go of Blake, wiping his face down a final time. His hands are still shaking, but he hides it well.

He picks up his rifle from its place against the dresser.

"We have to go. Your brother needs us."

It's true, and Schofield sees Blake's face change at the realization. Blake picks up his rifle, turning away from Will and wiping his nose.

The words come to mind abruptly, a relic of his Catholic childhood.

It feels fucking disgusting to pray right now, but Will starts mumbling anyway.

" _ Our father who art in heaven _ ," he whispers, buckling his kit back up. " _ Hallowed be thy name _ ." The words are foreign but familiar, something he had memorized as a young boy and promptly forgotten as soon as he shipped out.

" _ Thy kingdom come, _ " he mumbles, straightening out his leather shift. " _ Thy will be done. On Earth as it is in heaven." _

Blake is somewhere behind him. Will corks his canteen and slips it back into its holster. Finished, he turns and nods silently at his partner.

The two men step out of the room, leaving behind their atrocity.

" _ Give us this day our daily bread,"  _ he whispers, reverent. The sounds of the fires fade in, along with shells and barked German.

" _ And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." _

William isn't so sure about that one.

They sink back into their crouched stances, approaching the front door. It looks like a portal to Hell, and Schofield almost has to laugh.

" _ And deliver us from evil, _

_ For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory."  _ Will glances at Tom, face shifting in the firelight. He's so beautiful that Schofield immediately looks at the floor, denying himself so much the pleasure of gazing on a beautiful thing.

" _ Forever and ever." _

He pushes the door open.

" _ Amen." _

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading!! i really enjoyed writing this (as painful as it is lol) and spencer was a great writing buddy.  
> comments appreciated!


End file.
